Given that I found the president’s inaugural address kind of boring, I’m probably not the one to offer an extended exegesis. While I had sat in my futon for more than an hour following the festivities, rising only to refill my cup of coffee, I started fidgeting about three minutes into his speech, finally getting up to check my e-mail, this blog and other web-sites.

I still listened after I logged on, but did not focus as I had for the first parts of the address. The president seemed to shout the first part of the address, his tone modulating as he moved into the middle, then become more impassioned toward the end. The speech seemed rather pedestrian, neither uplifting nor inspiring. Just before a conservative friend was to pick me up to take me to Disneyland, I checked Stephen Green’s drunkblogging. That smart conservative pundit found the president sounded “the most conservative, sometimes even neoconnish, on issues of substance.”

In contrast to Steve who found neo-conservative themes in the speech, my friend had heard socialist overtones, slights against the outgoing president and threats against any who would dare oppose his initiatives.

When I returned home after a delightful day at Disney, I decided read what other bloggers had written about the speech rather than read it in its entirey, given that an Obama speech on paper (or via pixel) is much different than one as delivered.

Three other bloggers (Lowry, Novak, Ponnuru) concurred with my initial evaluation that the speech was “pedestrian.” While Nordlinger and Althouse saw slaps at Bush and McCain, othersthought it was a speech that could have been delivered by Bush or McCain or even Reagan.

One does not love their country based on which political party rules.Â Yet for American Liberals, that is exactly what they have been doing since Richard Nixon was elected.

Democrat = Good and True; Republican = evil and illegitimate.

Thomas Paine sums up my feelings quite well at yesterday’s display:

THESE are the times that try men’s souls.Â The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

How fitting that it was bright and sunny on the National Mall yesterday.

Eight years ago, about the time George W. Bush was sworn in, I recall telling a friend in my old synagogue that while I thought Bush would be a good president, I was concerned how he would be on Israel. His father, after all, had been quite a disappointment, appointing officials to the State Department who harbored a deep animus against the Jewish State.

But, as Bill Kristol points out in his latest New York Times column, the former president did not harbor such animus, indeed, proved to be a good friend of this democracy in the Middle East.

Bush stood with Israel when he had no political incentive to do so and received no political benefit from doing so. He was criticized by much of the world. He did it because he thought it the right thing to do.

It wasn’t just Israel where Bush showed courage, even when it gained him no political benefit. Kristol calls winning the war in Iraq “Bush’s most impressive achievement:”

. . . in particular, his refusal to accept defeat when so many counseled him to do so in late 2006. His ordering the surge of troops to Iraq in January 2007 was an act of personal courage and of presidential leadership. The results have benefited both Iraq and the United States. And the outcome in Iraq is a remarkable gift to the incoming president, who now only has to sustain success, rather than trying to deal with the consequences in the region and around the world of a humiliating withdrawal and a devastating defeat.

President Obama would do well to recall his predecessor’s courage in these endeavors. Sometimes leaders have to buck popular opinion and eschew political gain to do the right thing.

While Democrats were celebrating in Washington, I spent the day with three friends at Disneyland.Â It was perhaps the perfect place to spend the day.Â To be sure, we saw a handful of Obama T-shirts, but they were few and far between.Â Most people were just having a good time, not focused so much on the transfer of power in Washington.

Well, they were all visiting the “happiest place on earth.”Â And politics doesn’t always make us happy.Â To be sure, Mr. Jefferson thought that governments were “instituted among Men” to secure our right to pursue happiness.Â He didn’t say they were instituted to secure our happiness.Â Perhaps, that’s because governments don’t do a good job of providing our happiness.Â Â We must remember that they just protect our right to pursue it on our own.

And that’s where private organizations like Disneyland come in.

Every time I go to Disneyland is how little attention I pay to my watch when I’m wearing one.Â All too often, it seems I’m constantly watching the clock, trying to get my reading/research done for my dissertation, to finish reading the blogs and otherwise checking the news in term to blog informatively.

But, at Disneyland, I’m just in the moment.Â We all need such places.Â Maybe that’s why it is the happiest place on earth.

Every night before bed, I’ve been reading a few pages of Brian Kellow’s biography of the Republican most loved by gay men.Â On the last night of the Bush Administration, I read this anecdote:

Once when featured player [in Annie Get Your Gun] Danny Nagrin announced that he was going to march in the Communist Parade with his wife, choreographer Helen Tamiris, Ethel exploded.

“You march in that parade, and you’ll never get a job anywhere else I work. I don’t care what you do anywhere else. But not in my show. I’m an American citizen, and I’m proud of it. . . . .”

Nagrin didn’t march in the parade, and Ethel’s strong feelings on the subject never changed. On April 29, 1950, she would serve as Queen of the Loyalty Day Parade down Fifth Avenue, which she did as a way of undermining the Communist Parade.

How the entertainment industry has changed since Ethel’s heyday.Â Then, she could get a man fired for marching in a Communist parade.Â But, had a Danny Nagrin today announced his intention to march in a Republican parade, the announcement alone would cost him his job.

At Disneyland, only one person, a woman working one of the rides, took note of my Ronald Reagan t-shirt.Â (Well, at least she was the only one who acknowledged to me that she had taken note of it.)Â She made an approving comment about the great man I chose to honor on this day.

I asked if she had backed the guy who lost the chance to take office today.Â No, “we needed a change,” she said, but shared my warm feelings for the Gipper.

I found it hard to believe that someone who supported a man who faced a financial crisis by holding the line on federal spending could back a candidate who favors a vast increase in such spending, but there it was.

Yet, another sign that in a relatively ideology-free election, our new president had the right campaign slogan. People wanted change.Â Let’s hope he delivers the right kind of change.